With the plot, there is an issue with the movie failing to decide whether it wants to be a sequel or a remake. You have Star Wars at your disposal. You even discarded EU so you can do pretty much anything you want! You can do any story, change narrative style, anything you wish! But no, you decide to do a remake of the New Hope. And infinitely worse. But yeah. Rebel Alliance? Check. Desert planet farmer? Check. Destruction of Alderaan? Check. Your father's lightsaber? Check. Ben Kenobi dies? Check. Luke surprisingly meets Biggs? Check.Death Star trench run? Check. Last second to complete destruction of the Good? Check. Darth Vader miraculously surviving? Check.
This makes the plot rather predictable and in some cases even laughable. Like when they rehire the engineer who made the Death Star to design a planetary installation and he makes the same bloody mistake for the third time and it is crystal clear what the rest of the movie will look like. New Hope at least had the Miss and Han Saves the Day which are both nice twists.
But this is still not a fatal issue. What, however, is, is the dynamics of the movie and cutting. The film is a non-stop action where there is always something quick happening on screen. There is neary not a single place where the film is slower than in the rest. The most obvious example is when Han is lecturing them on the Falcon. It could have been a good slow-paced scene with a lot of explaining done, similar to its Your Father's Lightsaber scene in the New Hope, but for some reason it is cut like an action movie and there is absolutely nonsensical gag with holochess, that turns the pacing into even bigger crap. Or look at the New Hope's build-up for the final battle. It is very slow with nearly no music, basically hangar starship porn and final talks between characters, but it is slow. In The Force Awakens, this scene is super quick, dynamic and generally resembles something out of a JAG. Then A New Hope has long shot on X-Wing fleet, then starts all the S-foils locking and when the action starts with that dive, the music starts and everything, and you know the **** has just became real. The Force Awakens has the same dynamic in Brainstorming scene, Hangar Scene and The Battle scene. And every other scene except for some exceptions. And - the starting 15 minutes with Rey scavenging, that are almost flawless imho. Speaking of, everything that happens on Jakku is kinda okay. Everything past that is ****.
Then there are those incredible odds - okay, we stole the Millenium Falcon, 10 minutes later ran into Han, 20 minutes later casually found Luke's lightsaber (in a pirate chest in a random pub...okay) and 10 minutes later the Empire attacks.
What is good about the movie are the characters - Rey is Han+Luke in one character which is kinda nice. Finn is kinda okay and interesting; what I, however, don't see is his place in the movie. Like, why is he there? Kylo Ren is also good, but! But there should have been some bigger villain to compensate Kylo's incompetence. And Secretary General Smoke will not do, because of how cartoonish he is, lack of explanation of his motives and limited appearance. Space Hitler Hux has about the same time as Piett, but Piett is not needed, because his movies have Vader and the Emperor due that is sufficient as far as bad guys are concerned. Han? Okay, his death is badly executed, but his character makes sense.
Plotholes and script stupidities are large, but not as destructive as the pacing. The Brainstorming scene is probably the most idiotic - "okay, we have this Death Star schematics, what will we do? Hmm, there is this thing we can blow up to blow everything up. Hmm, okay, but it is protected by a shield. I know how to disable shield. Okay, all settled then. Let's go to your fighters!" Another could be lowering the shield that is done not by Return of a Jedi's explosion, but by Silver Stormtrooper's computer click. And not a single man on the planet can detect and override this. Sucks to be the Empire.
I would have gladly given it 7/10 if it would have just the pacing corrected. Like, I don't need 2001 speed, but this is ridiculous.
Oh, and I very much liked the sword fights.
